


The Decadence of Fire and Ice

by reyshine95



Series: Tales of the Pendria [1]
Category: Arthurian Mythology, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aether, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Asgard (Marvel), F/M, Is it a dream or is it real, Is this me being a bad friend or the best, Marvel Universe, Miðgarðr | Midgard, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Post-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Pre-Avengers (2012), Pre-Thor (2011), Psychological Torture, The Void (Marvel), Torture, lost loves, who knows - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2019-09-18 10:07:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16992984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyshine95/pseuds/reyshine95
Summary: A short one-shot because I'm a good friend.





	1. Chapter 1

Which is crueler? To die alone? 

Or to die with the one you love, _utterly_ _hating you?_

 ----

Regardless of the answer he might offer, Loki would be given no such choice within the darkest tombs of Thanos' prison.

The Mad Titan had many plans for the young wayward Prince of Asgard.

Now an outcast. An irredeemable villain, with no salvation at hand. 

Physical torture had many benefits with the weak-willed souls amongst the endless chasms of the Other's realm.

However, with such a being of immense resolution, numerous darker ventures were required to break the Asgardian before he might be of some use. 

At first, dark magicks were used to infiltrate the heavily guarded mind. A keen practitioner of the universe's innermost secrets, it was no easy feat to break down Loki's walls. 

To gouge out his secret weaknesses, to bleed from him all measure of whims and hedonistic desires... 

The family, _surely_ , would be a soft underbelly to rip from beneath him. Yet the hate that bubbled forth proved too palatable to use such connections. 

So deeper they dug, day after day, _nerve after nerve_ \-- until all were spliced before the darkness to behold. 

Yet one precious memory remained chaste within the near endless expanse of anger and resentment. 

A blossoming flower, innocent and dearly guarded. 

 _Ah_ \-- the most typical of weaknesses to uncover and yet, one worth exposing. Worth wringing out until every last drop of defiance severed any chance of rebellion. 

Loki would be made to yield for the Mad Titan, no matter what horrors must become him first. 

* * *

 

He's unspeakably quiet, which could not be perceived as unusual given the preceding events, and yet, what a wonder it could be considered to have ignored her so openly.

Perhaps he deemed it a dream and thus was unwilling to follow it in fear of being tricked.

Perhaps the guilt that languished within the very molecules of his bones deemed it too painful to acknowledge the fleeting chance.

After all, what would one so innocent be doing in a place of such damnation? 

This, truly, is exactly what is wanted. For the long rusted cogs within his rotting brain to turn and the heart once frozen to skip again. 

"Won't you look at me?" She whispers from the far side of the cell.

Her dress no different than the day he last beheld her, and the wild curls of crimson hair painted heavily glow upon star-kissed skin.

Regardless of if he hears her, he does not seem to answer. She frowns, unhappy to be ignored when so eagerly invited. 

Pulling from the far wall, the girl saunters ever closer. Like a heavenly scent of a banquet to be wafted before a starving man.

Yet she did not smell of bread or fine wine, but of honeysuckles and amber. The frayed skirt washed in fresh streams and scrubbed with oils of lemongrass and rosemary.

She's an enigma of twilight havens in circled in fairy lights and leather bound books. Ink-smudged fingers dusting over warmed cheeks as sweet hums filled the coming night with laughter and lullabies a new. 

If the Void had given him nothing but Hel, this memory was the essence of Valhalla injected directly into the veins.   

To reset such warmth amongst the frigid expanse would be pointless, and so, ever so slightly, he leans into her sphere of influence. 

Willingly tangled into the aura of all that once was -- and all that _could have_ been. 

"Loki," She hums again, sinking down to meet him now.

A radiance upon her cheek that seemed to spark the faintest of fires deep within her eyes. No longer endless evergreens and emerald gemstones. They bathed in molten golds that seemed richer than all the temples on Asgard. 

Truly captivated, and unable to resist the coming storm. 

"What have you done, my love? What _madness_ have you brought to us here?" 

She seems pained in some way. Her words tinged with unspoken sorrow. It is easy to allow her in, particularly when the place one made solely for her still neatly resided within. 

There's no answer beyond the most conflicted of expressions, a perplexing of the mind both relative to space and time. 

"Why did you leave?" The words tighter, languid and heartwrenching. " _Why did you let me die?_ " 

A jolt of adrenaline steels her voice like a dagger through the heart. It is followed with a flash of blinding light akin to helfire. 

Suddenly, there is no more cell. No dark abyss around them to siphon the sparks of a dying lifeforce.

They're in a meadow. Eclipsed with the overarching storm that brewed deep within. There's a house on the horizon, but no lush greenery circled the property. 

Its grass is charred, and the orchards surrounding it reeked of decay. Where birds once sung their morning hymns, now sat bone and rot. 

The world around them has been razed to the ground. Eerily familiar in its horror, and yet, she was the poignant difference. 

No longer in timely clothes. She's neatened in fashions befitting the times. Where waterfalls of crimson locks once ran endlessly now bluntly stacked against her harsh features. 

Unaged, but so different to the innocent beauty she'd once been. 

Still bound, he's forced to listen as her fair features twist in horror. Ivory flesh cracks in unimaginable scars. Pink cheeks sunken as once speckled skin seems inhuman and thin. 

"You could have stopped it... You could have prevented it all. _Why_ did you have to do this?"

Harrowingly she begged of him answers that seemed unknown. Unable to speak words that might mitigate such suffering to one so beloved -- she's unendingly clear in her accusations. 

"Why did you have to kill me? _Me, Loki?_ What crime have _I_ committed? What offense to you so hideous enough for such a punishment?" 

 ** _Me?_** The word like a pointed weapon to be hurled between the ages and straight through the heart.

There could be no mistake of its intention, and still, every measure of its utterance is fabricated to the reality of what once was. Like the shifting of sands, the scene before him mixed memory with an unknown place amongst the cosmos. 

He hadn't killed her. No -- _never_. He would never. Such words are painfully assured in heated whispers, but this phantom cannot be stopped as the skies roll in and thunder illuminates them.

"First, you betray your family, opening up the entirety of Asgard to the Mad Titan." 

His family? Betrayed? How could she -- no, _they_ were certainly the ones to have betrayed him...

"And then you set his eyes upon Midgard. And for what? To spite your brother? To enslave the very soil that made me? Have you no _LOVE_ left within you?"

Midgard? The madness surely would never cease, and every word that would pour from her tortured lips sent only further insanity.

"Don't you see? It all goes back to you.  _YOU_ betrayed your family,  _YOU_ sent Thanos to Midgard to alert his spies of its wonders. He never would have found the other stones if it hadn't been for you." 

She's closer now, hovering inches from him as the heavens seem to break open above them. No longer a rain to wash away trivial sins or vanquished battlefields of old. 

It's scolding sulfur. It's damnation. 

"And had you never turned the Aether back towards Asgard, had your hatred never overpowered your better judgment, Ragnarok would never have begun. _Your mother -- Your father_ \-- all your people would never have to fall with their light still there to protect them. It's **_YOU_** who damned them all." 

What was this? Had his memories become so lost within the Void that all time had ceased to exist? What had this been? What was this? What was this... _to become?_

"Once you allowed your own mistakes to ravage the world you hold so dear, what then? Your brother is MURDERED by your own insolence?! You lead that monster straight back to my world?! To disseminate the very grave you left me to rot in?!" 

She's on her knees, her clothes torn asunder and half melted to horrifically blemished flesh.

The sky raining down harder, yet only the ash was tainted with something foreign. It is essence akin to the wailing of eons.

Millions upon billions of souls trapped within the condensing atmosphere of her world. Slowly suffocating them all as they're quickly blanketed in endless suffering. 

"You promised me this would never happen... _that we would be safe_... that I'd would never have to be afraid again." 

Oh, how her heart echoed through the thick air, like the shuttering of the earth from deep within the core.

It painted only the horrors of doomsday. Of suffering. Of the end. 

"Out of billions of lives you handed over to him. Like they were nothing, like they meant nothing. Why your father's? Why your mother's? Why Thor's?" 

The swirling of the ionosphere is a symphony of screams. None were louder than the chorus of voices she described. The anguish of his closest and dearest. 

**_"....Why me?"_**

****

 


	2. Version Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the updated version with some altered commentary from my dear friend @sjalfvili. added italics are her alterations.

Which is crueler? To die alone? 

Or to die with the one you love,  _utterly_   _hating you?_

 ----

Regardless of the answer he might offer, Loki would be given no such choice within the darkest tombs of Thanos' prison.

The Mad Titan had many plans for the young wayward Prince of Asgard.

Now an outcast. An irredeemable villain, with no salvation at hand. 

Physical torture had many benefits with the weak-willed souls amongst the endless chasms of the Other's realm.

However, with such a being of immense resolution, numerous darker ventures were required to break the Asgardian before he might be of some use. 

At first, dark magicks were used to infiltrate the heavily guarded mind. A keen practitioner of the universe's innermost secrets, it was no easy feat to break down Loki's walls. 

To gouge out his secret weaknesses, to bleed from him all measure of whims and hedonistic desires... 

The family,  _surely_ , would be a soft underbelly to rip from beneath him. Yet the hate that bubbled forth proved too palatable to use such connections. 

So deeper they dug, day after day,  _nerve after nerve_  -- until all were spliced before the darkness to behold. 

Yet one precious memory remained chaste within the near endless expanse of anger and resentment. 

A blossoming flower, innocent and dearly guarded. 

_Ah_  -- the most typical of weaknesses to uncover and yet, one worth exposing. Worth wringing out until every last drop of defiance severed any chance of rebellion. 

Loki would be made to yield for the Mad Titan, no matter what horrors must become him first. 

* * *

 

He's unspeakably quiet, which could not be perceived as unusual given the preceding events, and yet, what a wonder it could be considered to have ignored her so openly.

Perhaps he deemed it a dream and thus was unwilling to follow it in fear of being tricked.  _The essence here was deceit._  


Perhaps the guilt that languished within the very molecules of his bones deemed it too painful to acknowledge the fleeting chance.

After all, what would one so innocent be doing in a place of such damnation? 

This, truly, is exactly what is wanted. For the long rusted cogs within his rotting brain to turn and the heart once frozen to skip again. 

"Won't you look at me?" She whispers from the far side of the cell.

Her dress no different than the day he last beheld her, and the wild curls of crimson hair painted heavily glow upon star-kissed skin.

Regardless of if he hears her, he does not seem to answer. _He cannot. He would not._ She frowns, unhappy to be ignored when so eagerly invited. 

Pulling from the far wall, the girl saunters ever closer. Like a heavenly scent of a banquet to be wafted before a starving man.

Yet she did not smell of bread or fine wine, but of honeysuckles and amber. The frayed skirt washed in fresh streams and scrubbed with oils of lemongrass and rosemary.

She's an enigma of twilight havens in circled in fairy lights and leather bound books. Ink-smudged fingers dusting over warmed cheeks as sweet hums filled the coming night with laughter and lullabies a new. 

If the Void had given him nothing but Hel, this memory was the essence of Valhalla injected directly into the veins.  _Even with little he could do to escape. Bound to where he knelt on bruised knees._  


To reset such warmth amongst the frigid expanse would be pointless, and so, ever so slightly, he leans into her sphere of influence. 

Willingly tangled into the aura of all that once was -- and all that  _could have_  been. 

"Loki," She hums again, sinking down to meet him now.

A radiance upon her cheek that seemed to spark the faintest of fires deep within her eyes. No longer endless evergreens and emerald gemstones. They bathed in molten golds that seemed richer than all the temples on Asgard. 

Truly captivated, and unable to resist the coming storm. 

"What have you done, my love? What  _madness_  have you brought to us here?" 

She seems pained in some way. Her words tinged with unspoken sorrow. It is easy to allow her in, particularly when the place one made solely for her still neatly resided within. 

_Madness._ There's no answer beyond the most conflicted of expressions, a perplexing of the mind both relative to space and time. 

"Why did you leave?" The words tighter, languid and heartwrenching. " _Why did you let me die?_ " 

A jolt of adrenaline steels her voice like a dagger through the heart. It is followed with a flash of blinding light akin to helfire. 

Suddenly, there is no more cell. No dark abyss around them to siphon the sparks of a dying lifeforce.

_I never intended for that, I-- he begins, but his voice is lost. As if it did not matter. As if he no longer had one._  
  
They're in a meadow. Eclipsed with the overarching storm that brewed deep within. There's a house on the horizon, but no lush greenery circled the property. 

Its grass is charred, and the orchards surrounding it reeked of decay. Where birds once sung their morning hymns, now sat bone and rot. 

The world around them has been razed to the ground. Eerily familiar in its horror, and yet, she was the poignant difference. 

No longer in timely clothes. She's neatened in fashions befitting the times. Where waterfalls of crimson locks once ran endlessly now bluntly stacked against her harsh features. 

Unaged, but so different to the innocent beauty she'd once been.  _Where had his beloved gone lest it be unto death?_  


Still bound, he's forced to listen as her fair features twist in horror. Ivory flesh cracks in unimaginable scars. Pink cheeks sunken as once speckled skin seems inhuman and thin. 

"You could have stopped it... You could have prevented it all.  _Why_  did you have to do this?"

Harrowingly she begged of him answers that seemed unknown. Unable to speak words that might mitigate such suffering to one so beloved -- she's unendingly clear in her accusations. 

"Why did you have to kill me?  _Me, Loki?_ What crime have  _I_  committed? What offense to you so hideous enough for such a punishment?" 

**_Me?_** The word like a pointed weapon to be hurled between the ages and straight through the heart.

_No, no! he cries. I could never-- oh, what a word ‘never’ was. To have listened to the voices holding him back, he had let her pay the penalty not due to her._  
  
There could be no mistake of its intention, and still, every measure of its utterance is fabricated to the reality of what once was. Like the shifting of sands, the scene before him mixed memory with an unknown place amongst the cosmos. 

He hadn't killed her. No --  _never_. He would never. Such words are painfully assured in heated whispers, but this phantom cannot be stopped as the skies roll in and thunder illuminates them.

"First, you betray your family, opening up the entirety of Asgard to the Mad Titan." 

His family? Betrayed? How could she -- no,  _they_  were certainly the ones to have betrayed him...

_But he had not betrayed them, they were the betrayers. Damning him here. They’ve damned her too. If should just see it. How could she--_  
  
"And then you set his eyes upon Midgard. And for what? To spite your brother? To enslave the very soil that made me? Have you no  _LOVE_  left within you?"

_Midgard?_ The madness surely would never cease, and every word that would pour from her tortured lips sent only further insanity.

_ No, I have no love. He is taking it from me. I beg you not to take what is left. _   


"Don't you see? It all goes back to you.  _YOU_  betrayed your family,  _YOU_  sent Thanos to Midgard to alert his spies of its wonders. He never would have found the other stones if it hadn't been for you." 

She's closer now, hovering inches from him as the heavens seem to break open above them. No longer a rain to wash away trivial sins or vanquished battlefields of old. 

It's scolding sulfur. It's damnation. 

"And had you never turned the Aether back towards Asgard, had your hatred never overpowered your better judgment, Ragnarok would never have begun.  _Your mother -- Your father_  -- all your people would never have to fall with their light still there to protect them. It's  ** _YOU_**  who damned them all." 

What was this? Had his memories become so lost within the Void that all time had ceased to exist? What had this been? What was this? What was this...  _to become?_

_ And what was this? Were these memories so lost within this Void that time had ceased its existence? Gods bleed past, present, future all at once. Was this what would become of him? _

_ So he is the monster. The monster in the stories. _

"Once you allowed your own mistakes to ravage the world you hold so dear, what then? Your brother is MURDERED by your own insolence?! You lead that monster straight back to my world?! To disseminate the very grave you left me to rot in?!" 

She's on her knees, her clothes torn asunder and half melted to horrifically blemished flesh.

The sky raining down harder, yet only the ash was tainted with something foreign. It is essence akin to the wailing of eons.

Millions upon billions of souls trapped within the condensing atmosphere of her world. Slowly suffocating them all as they're quickly blanketed in endless suffering. 

"You promised me this would never happen...  _that we would be safe_... that I'd would never have to be afraid again." 

Oh, how her heart echoed through the thick air, like the shuttering of the earth from deep within the core.  _All promises were now achingly empty._  


It painted only the horrors of doomsday. Of suffering. Of the end. 

"Out of billions of lives you handed over to him. Like they were nothing, like they meant nothing. Why your father's? Why your mother's? Why Thor's?" 

The swirling of the ionosphere is a symphony of screams. None were louder than the chorus of voices she described. The anguish of his closest and dearest. 

**_"....Why me?"_ **

_ Because I am the monster, one that devours -  that betrays.  _

He is rendered apart, dismantled into pieces of a person that once was. The Norns won’t answer his prayers. Left to the dark to become it.

_ Forgive me. _

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please go show some love to my dear friend over on her tumblr at @sjaflvili. 
> 
> her loki is our heart and soul over here.


	3. Touching the Void

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cause I don't now how to stop here's part two.

Weeks pass within the abyss. All at once or, perhaps, as if they turned to aeons upon each blink.

There was no mercy to be had, no salvation to be obtained in the deepest tombs of the void. 

While the physical horrors inflicted seemed to lessen, the inner-madness only spiraled more and more out of control.

What was, what is, and what _could_ be, ceased to have meaning.

Life, and all its many agonies, were the sole fixture in the unending isolation.

\-----

 

Sometimes, he seemed to dream. Of home and its once welcomed blessings, now torn asunder.

How many beauties were undermined in his zealousness? How much had been forsaken in his plights of jealousy? 

In the depths of the realm between the worlds, it was easy to stroll through the long renounced memories. The halls once called home, still glistened in golds and marbles that shined bright. 

The sounds of bells sung in the distant streets as the day's crest passed the people by. Children were laughing, soldier's marched their sanctioned patrols, and the hall of his father emptied for once. 

As he approached, the gilded chair held nothing, but a lingering shadow dared to stand before it. Wary, and no less conscious of his dream's fluidity by the numerous betrayals, Loki approached. 

Formless, at first, the flickery shadow seemed unruly even in its meager temperament. Casting a much larger darkness over the throne than the mass consumed in its spacing. 

Curious, he calls out to the phantom, demanding its purpose. Its name. 

As if the sound of his voice disturbed the vision itself, the roar of feeble wind morphed stillness into a rupturing storm. Bellowing for a mighty stroke of time, dust shifts the scene into a place of desolation. 

Shielding his eyes from the hailstorm of upheaval, his shadowy counterpart is now too replaced with a solid figure. 

No longer inky and unknown, it is fixed. Absolute and beautiful. _She is beautiful._

 

No higher than the grand swords used by the giants of wars past, she is wrapped in silvers and tattered leathers. Out of place, yet in the murky surroundings of this helscape, it seemed she was meant to be there. 

Raven hair fell over her shoulder, slick but wild in its nature. She is as pale as the first snow. Delicate in appearance, like a tender bloom outstretched in wonder of the coming spring. 

He is unseen it would appear until temptation pulls him a step closer. 

The rubble cracked beneath his feet, spooking her enough to turn from contemplating the ruined throne site. 

Some visions were like paintings, _only made for his viewing_ \-- only focused on the singular and deafening perspective of agony.

Still some, as rare as they were, seemed beyond the Other's doing. 

They were windows, visions through time and space. Unprovoked by himself, or so he assumed, and yet perfectly centered around his comings and goings through the metaphysical. 

When her shining emerald orbs find his own, it is abundantly clear that this singularity was the latter. She  _SEES_  him. 

 

After aeons of agonies, alone and without salvation, _someone_ sees him beyond the confines of this imprisonment. 

Another step is taken closer, to inhale the very sanctity of this phenomenon, but she pauses before turning away from him. The room seems to tremble, almost as if his grip on the realm is shaken by her hesitance. 

But there was more within her gaze than simple uncertainty oh no -- there was something clearer than the deepest night. Recognition. 

She knew him. Knew of his home. He might rejoice for the opportunity had her recognition not followed with deep melancholy. 

 

Sweet gaze turns, peering up into the vaulted ceilings once ordained with heavenly murals. Now cracked and peeling, left naked many histories deep. Like everything had burned away to its essence, back to the beginning of all things. Purified by fire and brimstone. 

"I never thought I would find this place," She confesses softly, eyes tracing the fragments of the depictions of those who had once held the throne sat before her. "But I always dreamt I'd come, you know?" 

A step is taken from the throne's resting place, and she begins the lazy tract across the first archway still following its wonderments. 

"When I was a little girl, my mother would show me a film. It was about this magical boy named Peter Pan, and he would fly in over the sky from another world to bring a girl on heroic adventures." 

He is rooted in his place, watching her languidly stroll about the ruins as if he were but another exhibit to be seen. A ghost in his halls now long passed into damnation. 

"Neverland, his world was called. A place across the stars, where no one would ever grow old, and seemingly lived forever amongst their wonders," She seems to recall rather dreamingly. An innocence about her flush, not weary like his own. 

"I use to pretend that I was Wendy, and every night, once my mother was asleep, I would sneak out of our house through one of our doors to the ancient relics nearby." An adventure in her own making, daring to defy and find true purpose like those fanciful stories. 

"That's all I had, you know? Not a second star or a pirates ship... just a bunch of old rocks and a story that my Peter would come back one day." 

 

Suddenly, those softened features fell in spirit and sights. Finally, her sights return to him with a swarming mixture of conflict and gloom. Mourning, something to which he could not begin to understand.

He wants to speak, to absolve this sorrow, even if he did not know its nature. 

"Can you imagine how stupid I felt when the years slipped by? A foolish little girl waiting on some muggy hillside, in the middle of nowhere, for a figment of her own imagination?"

Near in disbelief at this phantom, but there's room to argue. A clear pull to dissuade her conversation born of unknown origin. Her anguish somehow became his own. A weapon renewed amongst his eternity of nothingness.  

"At first, my hope turned to confusion, then to disappointment, but after the years ticked by -- I was left with _nothing_ but anger and fear." 

The girl steps closer, and unlike the torments of old, she is more a ghost in these visions than any before her.

Cold as he, near vapor in scent and substance. As if she was as much a part of the darkness as the void itself.  

Upon closer inspection, he finds himself unsure of the girl's nature. The texture of her hair more ink than curl, the softness of her skin more ash than ivory.

It was to speak to death, itself, it would seem. And she was leeching his essence across the plains of time. 

 

"You see, once I accepted my Peter was never coming, I accepted it would just be my mother and myself. I turned my energy towards becoming the very best I could be for her. _Her heir,_ **_her legacy._** "

 Only feet apart now, she stands with a resoluteness far more than her apparent age. Features not that of a mere child, there's a lassitude stronger than his own.

Yet, still a strength. A fortitude that had conquered more than mere demons. As she looks into his eyes, there is no fear or anguish for him. No mourning for the ghosts of his home now lost to the ages.

These sorrows of hers were buried, and he, not yet cold in his grave, held them close. She aimed to seal them both in the darkness forever. 

"The way I spoke, the way I dressed, the way I studied. I followed her dutifully. I stayed inside and away from the world, desperate to be what she wanted. _What I wanted_." 

A child, desperate for acceptance by one's elders. Yearning to be normal and safe within the confines of their own realm. His heart breaks in their connection. Feeling the same churning in his belly as she felt in her own. 

 

"But I couldn't, I would _never_ be," And thus words fade from valor and sink into the pitfalls of vulnerability and shame. 

"Because every time I looked in the mirror, I didn't see my mother." Without words to explain, he feels the sting of her admission. The bleeding of seeing that which one would not claim looking back from the shadows.

"Every time I tried to exercise my right to be her legacy... the power _never_ came." 

Loki feels the chill of her presence lap against his being, but there was no ease to this. No comfort in this merciless dance. Looking down into features so familiar, he is stolen by her words. Enraptured, entirely. 

"I was broken. Flawed. For a long time, I felt like I wasn't even her daughter. I was no one. Unworthy, and all of it, _because of YOU_."

Words like a hammer fall, striking to the very core of his being. Spoken from a creature with no grit or grievous hatred in her bones. 

 

Like a spell to be laid before the gods of old, a weaving of a Norn's branch through the harvests of time. Loki could not shun these words like the nightmares before her. 

This was a touch of the void's being, a glimpse through the folds of time. Not a punishment, nor a crafting of mere men. None but her held its reigns. 

"I couldn't be what I needed to be because of you. _You_... ** _tainted me_**. I couldn't have her gifts. Hel, I couldn't even settle for Midgardian ones." A touch of truth, of reality to speak these figments of the metaphysical into existence.

Yet no matter the harolding of vibrancy and opportunity this seemed, the child within cowards at the heartwrenching virtue now ripped asunder before him. 

"And again, I waited, terrified and angry, at this.... horrific fairy tale gone wrong. I wasn't going to be taken away to some magical land, and things certainly wouldn't be made right." No one came for her, no one spared of her of this agony. 

 

There's a part of him that wishes to beg her to cease, to leave him to his isolation amongst the void, but she was all around him. Flooding into the scenery like the shaking of a storm. 

"I was a _MONSTER_ , and my mother couldn't do anything to fix me. I could not be fixed." 

She's unbearably close now, standing just before him, eyes staring up with ten-thousand emotions running through them. They pierced through the entirety of his core, seeping stardust and antimatter into his veins. 

He wants to look away, turn and run, but he can't. Even the fluttering of his gaze is spurned by the rising of a most unwelcomed touch upon his cheek.

The first in what felt like centuries, shocking and numbing throughout his being. He is fixed to the spot, dust around him glistening like a looking glass, and they are locked in each other's gaze. 

Like a whisper on the wind, her voice is heard even without lips parting. A spirit embedded in his mind. A madness, unslakable in its brilliance. 

 _Daddy_. "I wasn't sick... I was just... **_you_**." 

_And now I'm alone here too._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm a good fran ok.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short one-shot because I'm a good friend that has a lot of feelings ok.


End file.
